Infants and other incontinent individuals wear disposable absorbent articles to receive and contain urine and other bodily exudates. Absorbent articles having fixed sides, e.g. disposable training pants, have been popular for use on toilet-training children. Currently, training pants must be manufactured in several different sizes to accommodate the different size children of toilet-training age. Accordingly, to adequately meet the consumers needs, a manufacturer of disposable training pants must have several different sets of manufacturing equipment to produce the various sizes. It is, therefore, very desirable to have a design that would allow the manufacturer to make a one-size-fits-all training pant which will substantially meet the consumers needs by fitting a very broad range of child sizes. This requires that the training pant fit snugly about the waist and legs of smaller children without drooping, sagging or sliding down from its position about the lower torso, and must fit larger children without causing irritation to the skin about the waist, legs and crotch. Therefore, the disposable training pants must be elastically extensible about the waist and legs of the wearer, and the elastic elements must have a high degree of stretch.
Prior training pants have been made elastically extensible using elastic elements disposed in the training pants such that the waist opening and leg openings are at least partially encircled with elasticized bands. This method of using elastic elements is shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,205,679 to Repke, et al.; 4,610,680 to LaFleur; 4,610,681 to Strohbeen, et al.; 4,641,381 to Heran, et al.; 4,909,804 to Douglas, St.; and 4,960,414 to Heyer. Although training pants made according to these methods will allow the absorbent articles to fit slight variations in waist size and slight variations in leg size, training pants made according to these particular methods are limited in their range of fit sizes, because the elastic elements do not have a high degree of stretch, and because the fixed sides are not elastically extensible.
Another method of elasticizing disposable training pants is shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,490,464; 4,938,753; and 4,938,757 all of which issued to Van Gompel, et al. These patents disclose a pant-like garment formed by attaching discrete stretchable members to the side edges of the main body of the garment. Although training pants made according to this method will also allow the absorbent articles to fit slight variations in size, a training pant made according to this particular method is limited in its range of fit sizes because the fixed sides are formed by securing discrete stretchable members to the side edges of the main body of the garment which results in nonfunctional attachment zones, i.e. the area where the main body and the discrete stretchable members overlap forms an area that is not elongatable and is not absorbent. A training pant made according to this particular method is also limited in its range of fit sizes because the discrete stretchable members which make up the side panels of the garment do not have a high degree of stretch.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide a method of making an elasticized disposable garment with a high degree of stretch such that the disposable garment will comfortably fit wearers in a broad range of sizes.